ALROY KEAR and I, as arranged, met on Friday at Victoria Station to
catch the five ten to Blackstable. We made ourselves comfortable in
opposite corners of a smoking compartment. From him I now learned
roughly what had happened to Driffield after his wife ran away from him.
Roy had in due course become very intimate with Mrs. Barton Trafford.
Knowing him and remembering her, I realized that this was inevitable. I
was not surprised to hear that he had travelled with her and Barton on
the continent, sharing with them to the full their passion for Wagner,
post-impressionist painting, and baroque architecture. He had lunched
assiduously at the flat in Chelsea and when advancing years and failing
health had imprisoned Mrs. Trafford to her drawing room, notwithstanding
the many claims on his time he had gone regularly once a week to sit
with her. He had a good heart. After her death he wrote an article about
her in which with admirable emotion he did justice to her great gifts of
sympathy and discrimination.
It pleased me to think that his kindliness should receive its due and
unexpected reward, for Mrs. Barton Trafford had told him much about
Edward Driffield that could not fail to be of service to him in the work
of love in which he was now engaged. Mrs. Barton Trafford, exercising a
gentle violence, not only took Edward Driffield into her house when the
flight of his faithless wife left him what Roy could only describe by
the French word _désemparé_, but persuaded him to stay for nearly a
year. She gave him the loving care, the unfailing kindness, and the
intelligent understanding of a woman who combined feminine tact with
masculine vigour, a heart of gold with an unerring eye for the main
chance. It was in her flat that he finished _By Their Fruits_. She was
justified in looking upon it as her book and the dedication to her is a
proof that Driffield was not unmindful of his debt. She took him to
Italy (with Barton of course, for Mrs. Trafford knew too well how
malicious people were, to give occasion for scandal) and with a volume
of Ruskin in her hand revealed to Edward Driffield the immortal beauties
of that country. Then she found him rooms in the Temple and arranged
little luncheons there, she acting very prettily the part of hostess,
where he could receive the persons whom his increasing reputation
attracted.
It must be admitted that this increasing reputation was very largely due
to her. His great celebrity came only during his last years when he had
long ceased to write, but the foundations of it were undoubtedly laid by
Mrs. Trafford’s untiring efforts. Not only did she inspire (and perhaps
write not a little, for she had a dexterous pen) the article that Barton
at last contributed to the _Quarterly_ in which the claim was first made
that Driffield must be ranked with the masters of British fiction, but
as each book came out she organized its reception. She went here and
there, seeing editors and, more important still, proprietors of
influential organs; she gave soirées to which everyone was invited who
could be of use. She persuaded Edward Driffield to give readings at the
houses of the very great for charitable purposes; she saw to it that his
photographs should appear in the illustrated weeklies; she revised
personally any interview he gave. For ten years she was an indefatigable
press agent. She kept him steadily before the public.
Mrs. Barton Trafford had a grand time, but she did not get above
herself. It was useless indeed to ask him to a party without her; he
refused. And when she and Barton and Driffield were invited anywhere to
dinner they came together and went together. She never let him out of
her sight. Hostesses might rave; they could take it or leave it. As a
rule they took it. If Mrs. Barton Trafford happened to be a little out
of temper it was through him she showed it, for while she remained
charming, Edward Driffield would be uncommonly gruff. But she knew
exactly how to draw him out and when the company was distinguished could
make him brilliant. She was perfect with him. She never concealed from
him her conviction that he was the greatest writer of his day; she not
only referred to him invariably as the master, but, perhaps a little
playfully and yet how flatteringly, addressed him always as such. To the
end she retained something kittenish.
Then a terrible thing happened. Driffield caught pneumonia and was
extremely ill; for some time his life was despaired of. Mrs. Barton
Trafford did everything that such a woman could do, and would willingly
have nursed him herself, but she was frail, she was indeed over sixty,
and he had to have professional nurses. When at last he pulled through,
the doctors said that he must go into the country, and since he was
still extremely weak insisted that a nurse should go with him. Mrs.
Trafford wanted him to go to Bournemouth so that she could run down for
week-ends and see that everything was well with him, but Driffield had a
fancy for Cornwall, and the doctors agreed that the mild airs of
Penzance would suit him. One would have thought that a woman of Isabel
Trafford’s delicate intuition would have had some foreboding of ill. No.
She let him go. She impressed on the nurse that she entrusted her with a
grave responsibility; she placed in her hands, if not the future of
English literature, at least the life and welfare of its most
distinguished living representative. It was a priceless charge.
Three weeks later Edward Driffield wrote and told her that he had
married his nurse by special license.
I imagine that never did Mrs. Barton Trafford exhibit more preëminently
her greatness of soul than in the manner in which she met this
situation. Did she cry, Judas, Judas? Did she tear her hair and fall on
the floor and kick her heels in an attack of hysterics? Did she turn on
the mild and learned Barton and call him a blithering old fool? Did she
inveigh against the faithlessness of men and the wantonness of women or
did she relieve her wounded feelings by shouting at the top of her voice
a string of those obscenities with which the alienists tell us the
chastest females are surprisingly acquainted? Not at all. She wrote a
charming letter of congratulation to Driffield and she wrote to his
bride telling her that she was glad to think that now she would have two
loving friends instead of one. She begged them both to come and stay
with her on their return to London. She told everyone she met that the
marriage had made her very, very happy, for Edward Driffield would soon
be an old man and must have someone to take care of him; who could do
this better than a hospital nurse? She never had anything but praise for
the new Mrs. Driffield; she was not exactly pretty, she said, but she
had a very nice face; of course she wasn’t quite, quite a lady, but
Edward would only have been uncomfortable with anyone too grand. She was
just the sort of wife for him. I think it may be not unjustly said that
Mrs. Barton Trafford fairly ran over with the milk of human kindness,
but all the same I have an inkling that if ever the milk of human
kindness was charged with vitriol, here was a case in point.